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goals

We all give ourselves goals. While some people give themselves more ambitious goals than others, we declare what we’ll accomplish.

Stating what you’ll do and actually doing it are two different things.

Experience has taught us the truth behind that statement. Sometimes we don’t do what we’ll say. At other times, we watch other people not do as they say.

Repeatedly falling short of your goals is one of the biggest bumps you can hit along the journey. Some people feel stuck after trying again and again only to see no results.

However, there are some people who do as they say they’ll do. They’re the ones accomplishing all of their top goals. They’re the role models we look up to when our journeys get difficult.

While these people are our role models, the intent of having a role model is to someday reach their status, surpass them, or get significantly close to doing so. To do that, we need to do more of what we say we’ll do.

We need to accomplish more of the goals we give ourselves. Here’s the framework you can use to make that happen.

Get Clear On What You Want To Do

The first step towards achievement is getting clear on what you want to do. While this seems straightforward, it’s actually more complex. You need to look deeper behind each of the goals you give yourself.

In some cases, there is a goal behind the goal. A social media marketer may want to double his/her Twitter audience this year because that goal supports the goal of getting 100,000 blog visitors in one month.

An up-and-coming public speaker may decide to organize a meet-up in an attempt to land more public speaking gigs in the future.

We need to differentiate between our goals that are goals themselves and our other goals which move us closer towards our ideal goals.

Think more big picture for this part. By thinking of the big picture, you can expand your possibilities. For you, it may be easy to double your Twitter audience given your audience size. For me, it’s much more difficult. As of writing, doubling my Twitter audience means gaining another 400,000 followers.

That’s a goal that takes multiple years to reach given my current set up. I could tweak my set-up to achieve that goal in a year, but it would be an incredible challenge.

Instead of aiming to double my Twitter audience every year, I now ask 10 people (using permission marketing) to share my content every day.

Based on my ideal goal of getting 100,000 monthly visitors, it makes more sense for me to leverage permission marketing than aim to double my Twitter audience in one year.

One is very difficult while the other is easy. Permission marketing is also very scalable and can result in more long-term traffic than doubling my Twitter audience.

By identifying the ideal goals and the goals that only serve as passageways towards those ideal goals, you can determine your destination but maintain a flexible approach.

The flexible approach is important, but you only achieve that flexible approach by getting clear on what you want. If you need to get clear on what you want, and you don’t know how to categorize your goal, ask yourself this question:

Where do I want this to lead me?

Growing my social media audience is my way of getting more blog traffic.

Getting more blog traffic is my way of growing my email list.

So the ideal goal is to grow my email list. Blog traffic and social media growth are the passageways towards that goal. You can take different passageways. As long as you know where you’re supposed to end up, you have a much better chance of getting there.

Write It Down

I know that may be happening. Your mind is streaming with ideas and goals. You may feel excited now, but you need to give those ideas and goals a place to breathe. Ideas and goals breathe and grow on paper.

Writing down your declaration every day will train your subconscious to look for and think of new opportunities. This is why people who write their goals soon plan out the action steps. Your subconscious is preparing you behind the scenes to accomplish the goal.

You should write your top goal down every day. The more you write your goal, the more engrained it will become in your subconscious.

Schedule Time To Get It Done

If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t get done. The reason I’ve interviewed hundreds of people is because all of those interviews were in my calendar. If those interviews weren’t scheduled, they wouldn’t have happened.

While it’s easy to understand this concept with interviews and meetings, you can also schedule various tasks throughout your day.

What time will you write your blog post? What time will you do videos? When will you take your breaks?

All of these need to be scheduled in your calendar. Scheduling your goals will put you on the road to goal achievement and eliminate the decision making process.

One of the reasons people fall short of their potential is because they have too many decisions. Do you write the blog post or promote yourself on social media? If you decide to promote yourself on social media, which social network do you use? How do you use that social network? When do you decide to move onto the next task?

It hurt my mind just to write those questions, but questions like these wildly dash through our minds every day. Scheduling specific actions for specific times and dates eliminates this problem. Get your life on a schedule, and then you’ll end up doing more of what you say you’ll do.

To crave your need for spontaneity, you can give yourself some breaks in the day when you can do anything you please.

Not all of the tasks in your life are created equal. Coaching your clients is more important than responding to non-client emails, but responding to these emails is still necessary. New emails create a sense of urgency which is often mixed up with importance.

How do you handle urgent emails and pursue important tasks such as coaching your clients? You delegate more tasks. You can delegate the responses for some of those emails. You can hire someone to grow your social media audience.

The more you delegate, the more of your time will open up. You can use this extra time to accomplish bigger goals that lead to a bigger profit. Not only will you do what you say you’ll do, but you can also set higher standards for yourself.

Instead of aiming for $5K/mo, you can go for $10K/mo.

With delegation, there are no limits to how much of your time you can get back. Just make surer the actions you take with your newfound time can easily pay off your employees’ salaries.

Keep Yourself Accountable

You can set up your process so that only you know about your goals. The issue with this route is that you can lie to yourself, even if you have good intentions.

Let’s say you got 1,000 blog visitors last month. If your goal was to get 7,000 blog visitors this month, and you end up getting 6,000 blog visitors, it’s tempting to call that a success and ignore the fact that you set a bigger goal.

Don’t get me wrong. A sixfold increase in monthly traffic is amazing. However, we can’t shrink the target if we’re worried about our abilities. The target you set at the start of the month should stay the same from Day 1 to the final day.

Stay true to the goals that you set. If you don’t, then it will be more difficult to do as you say you’ll do.

Instead of using private accountability to accomplish your goals, you need to leverage public accountability. Tell your quality friends and peers (the ones who will help and encourage you. Do not tell people who will tear you down) about your big goals.

You can also partner up with an accountability partner so you can keep each other on track. I’ve seen accountability partnerships where the person who achieves less of his/her ideal goals gives $50 to the person who achieved more of his/her ideal goals.

You can also join a Facebook Group where you post about your goals every day or week depending on the group. You can even publicly post your goals on social media and your blog.

It’s always better to let a small group of people know about your goals than no one at all.

In Conclusion

We all seek to become better at what we care about. We’ll set big goals and make mighty claims. Some of these people don’t accomplish their goals. Others hit their targets and push them further away to ignite more growth.

Your level of success depends on you identifying the right goals to focus on and then getting them done. Remember, if you’re going to give yourself a big goal, take massive action so you can see your goals become part of your reality.

What were your thoughts on these tactics? Do you have any advice for us? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

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What would you do if you could write an extra 10,000 words to kick you content into high gear?

Would you write five lengthy blog posts? How about an e-book? Or maybe high-converting sales copy for multiple landing pages?

Writing 10,000 words seems more than challenging. Writing 10,000 words seems nearly impossible. However, it is entirely possible. I can write 10,000 words during most weeks.

When I’m feeling really good, I can write 10,000 words in one day. At that rate, I could write 70,000 words per week, or 3,650,000 words every year.

I don’t consistently write at this pace, but when I do write 10,000 words in a day, it’s an awesome feeling. If I manage to write 10,000 words in one day, I can dedicate several more days to content marketing.

With the right work ethic, you can write 10,000 words in less than 12 hours.

Not Your Everyday Writing Goal

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t write 10,000 words every single day of the year. I do it on occasion. The problem with a goal like this is that some people will get tempted to put off their writing and go all-out on one day of the week (or, even worse, once per month).

Writing 10,000 words in one day, but forgetting about the other days of the week, will set you up for ruin. You won’t develop a habit for writing, and you’ll grind through the process instead of enjoying the journey.

If you constantly pressure yourself with this goal, you risk getting overwhelmed and despising writing all together. Before you consider writing 10,000 words in a given day, you need an established habit.

My absolute minimum goal is to write 1,500 words per day, although I usually finish most days at 2,000-3,000 words. The reason I don’t write 10,000 words every day is because I have other responsibilities for my brand. Once I write the content, I have to spend even more time on marketing.

This is why I rarely type 10,000 words in a given day. If you have the writing habit built-in, then you’re ready for your first 10K word day. I advise making a goal for 10K words in a day only twice per month. If you do anymore than that, you risk burnout, but if it works for you, then more power to you!

How To Get The Writing Habit Down

If you don’t have a writing habit, you need to start developing it. Five-hundred words per day is a great starting point. But how do you reach it? For some people, writing 500 words seems just as impossible.

Up to now, I’ve written exactly 500 words and didn’t even notice. It took me just a few minutes. Writing 500 words isn’t that easy, but once you’ve been writing millions of words for your blog posts and books, writing 500 words in one sitting is light work.

Let’s get back to habit development. According to science, it takes 66 days for any activity to become a habit. If you write 500 words every day for two months, you can easily write 500 words anytime.

But instead of writing 500 words per day until it becomes a habit, you need to gradually increase your word count. After a week of writing 500 words, challenge yourself to go a little higher. Don’t make a big jump in the beginning. Choose a more manageable jump such as 550 words per day.

You could even increase your word count to 510 words per day. Small increases add up, and soon enough, you will effortlessly write thousands of words on any given day. It all starts with your daily habits.

Right now, you might be creating a mental roadblock in front of your writing habit. It’s something you know you want or need to do, but for some reason, you keep putting it off.

In The Productivity Project, Chris Bailey lays out six triggers for procrastination. When you look at this list, ask yourself if any of these triggers impact you when you write:

I write about topics that I care about, and enjoy writing blog posts like this because they help the people that I’m trying to reach. I don’t enjoy writing history papers, for example, because 99% of them are forced assignments necessary for the grade.

Calculate Your WPM

Let’s shift gears back to your first 10K word day. The next bit of information you’ll need is your WPM. This popular acronym stands for Words Per Minute in the writing community.

WPM is an assessment of how many words you can type in a given minute. Using your WPM, it’s easy to calculate your WPH. Just multiply your WPM by 60. For example, if you type at 40 WPM, then your WPH is 2,400 words.

With the average WPM lurking between 38-40, the 500 word goal is easily attainable. It’s an average WPM. For most people, it will only take 12.5 minutes or less to finish writing a 500 word blog post (assuming the idea and outline are already in place).

Knowing your WPH allows you to determine how much time you need to write 10,000 words. With the average being 40 WPM (and therefore 2,400 WPH), you only need to type for four hours and 10 minutes to reach the 10,000 word milestone.

Of course, this is assuming you consistently type at 40 WPM from start to finish. At some points, you’ll be thinking of different ideas and possibly doing research to verify certain facts as you write your content.

In that case, it will take longer than four hours and 10 minutes. If you factor in everything else that can possibly happen (including idea development while writing), you’ll find yourself at the 5-5 1/2 hour range for 10,000 words in a day.

Mathematically speaking, none of this seems as scary as before, right? I could literally write 10,000 words every day of the year, but five hours of writing each day without any marketing won’t bring forth a content brand.

This entire example is based on the average WPM. You may be slightly above or below the average WPM. The only way to determine your status is to start a typing test. Typing tests only last a few minutes; what type what shows up on the screen, and you get your WPM in real-time.

The typing test lasts for a minute, and then you get to see your results.

Here’s mine:

For this speed test, I typed 95 words per minute, which came from countless hours of practice. At this rate, I could write 5,700 words in one hour and finish writing 10,000 words in just two hours.

While this data is skewed since the words are already provided (and you’ll have to think of fresh ideas to write about), knowing your WPM gives you a rough idea of how much time it will take for you to write 10,000 words. Just tack on an extra hour to factor in time for idea generation.

While writing takes time, editing and revising can take even longer. That’s why I don’t edit any of my content. I hire an editor to help me with this part of my content brand.

Outsourcing makes it easier for me to pursue my high impact tasks without worrying about typos or silly mistakes.

Combining Attention & Energy

The timing of your work is just as important as the amount of time you invest in your work. Let me share an example with you:

Writer A goes through the entire day feeling exhausted. She still feels exhausted but pulls out her computer anyway and starts typing at 10 pm.

Writer B wakes up at 6 am and starts writing almost immediately. After some typing, she takes a break, eats a healthy breakfast, and then continues typing for another hour.

Which writer seems more productive to you? I’d go with Writer B any day of the week. Both writers are committed and willing to write for several hours. The difference is that one feels charged up while the other feels exhausted.

Your body and mind are part of you, and they play a big role in your productivity. If you feel distracted, that will negatively affect your productivity. There’s no question about it.

Most people focus on time as a measurement of productivity. If you worked for six hours today, you were more productive than when you only worked for five hours, right?

That approach is all wrong.

It’s not just a matter of how much time we put into our work, more specifically, it’s about what kind of time we’re putting into our work. Are you putting quality minutes into your work, or do you struggle through the day eager to boast about how much work you did later?

Circling back to The Productivity Project, Chris Bailey also mentions biological primetime. Everyone has a biological primetime, the timeframe in which it’s easiest for us to enter our working flow. For me, my biological primetime is early in the morning. For others, their biological primetime is in the afternoon or evening.

Think about how you work to determine your biological primetime. That is when you need to write your content. During this primetime, it’s much easier to write 10K words.

To actually find your primetime, you need to track your entire day, from what tasks you completed to how often you procrastinated. If you do this for a week, you will discover your biological primetime.

Once you know your primetime, you can reallocate your tasks so your high-value tasks (i.e. writing 10K words) get distributed within your biological primetime. That way, your attention and energy are properly focused on the work that matters most when you’re at your optimal level of productivity.

Not only should you track your time to discover your biological primetime, you should also learn a lot about yourself. You’ll learn how you spend your time and how you procrastinate. You can more easily weed out the bad activities so you can focus more of your time, attention, and energy on the tasks that create the biggest impact.

Space Everything Else Out Of Your Biological Primetime

When you keep track of your time, you’ll discover which tasks you do during your biological primetime. Most people discover that they’re making a big blunder within this golden opportunity.

If you check your stats, read the news, or scroll through Facebook during these golden hours, you are restricting your potential. That is the time you should focus on writing content.

Based on how you track your time, you’ll determine different distractions that can get in your way. Email and the internet are two of the many distractions that call us when we are trying to pursue our work. Anticipate distractions like these and eliminate them.

When I write a blog post, I’m almost never on the internet. The only time I use the internet while writing a blog post is when I’m doing research. I find the right time to mention someone else’s article. All I have to do is get the link, and that’s the only time I use the internet while blogging.

Oh, and I never see my Mail icon when I’m writing blog posts. I remove that app from my dashboard and only bring it back when I’m done writing.

Plan Out Your Content In Advance

I keep score of my blog posts’ lengths as I write them. Right now, this blog post is a little over 2,000 words long. In the past, I would struggle to get past 1,000 words with a blog post like this.

I might get past 1,000 words on a post, but not by much.

I always planned out my content in advance, even when it felt like writing massive blog posts was challenging. Back then, my outline was limited. I identified the blog post title and which tactics I would discuss.

Now I use the Socratic Outline for all of my blog posts. The Socratic Outline is like a traditional outline with a twist. You act as the reader and type questions the reader would have. For each tactic I discuss, I type at least three questions that the reader might ask.

For a blog post on getting more Twitter followers, one tip would be “Interact with your audience.” Here are some questions people may have:

How do I interact with my audience?

What do I say?

How do I continue the conversation?

Instead of having five ideas within a blog post containing five tactics, I now multiply that total to 15 ideas within the same blog post containing the same five tactics. The more ideas you have to play with in your writing, the easier it is to write 10,000 quality words each day.

Change Your Environment

The tactics mentioned so far will give you the skills and mindset needed to write 10,000 words in under 12 hours. However, your environment is also a critical factor. When I first wrote this blog post, I mentioned that we all have a biological primetime. We are more productive during certain times of the day than others.

I want to take biological primetime one step further. Your biological primetime differs based on the environment you are in. At home, my biological primetime is the morning. Towards the evening, especially after 5 pm eastern, my productivity drops.

The biological primetime for my productivity at home is in the morning.

Once the morning and most of the afternoon slip away, that’s when I go to a local bookstore to finish the rest of my work.

My productivity spikes in the new environment because my environment has changed. Your environment affects your biological primetime. I’m more productive at a local bookstore during the evening, and I only create content in that bookstore.

I do all of the tech related work in the morning (create landing pages, check email sequences, etc.) and create as much content as my heart desires.

If your productivity is lagging at certain times of the day, the best solution is to change your environment. Then, you change your results.

In Conclusion

Writing 10,000 words a day is a daunting task, especially if you do it consistently. However, if you write 10,000 words two days each month, you’ll add an extra 20,000 words to your monthly total.

Those 20,000 words can provide you with several blog posts, books, and other forms of content. As you continue writing every day, you’ll have an easier time writing high quality words in massive quantities.

Now Here’s What I Want From You

How many words do you write each day? What are your thoughts on the 10K word day? What’s your plan to write more content? Have a question for me?

Leave me a comment. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who needs this burst of insight, make sure you pass it on.

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No matter what your profession, you want to accomplish more goals. And you want to accomplish your goals twice as fast. If you are still working for an employer, you want to get twice as much done for your startup so you can achieve better results.

Everyone wants to be more productive . But the problem is that most people aren’t very productive. We often find ourselves busy with all of the tasks we must complete in a given day, but being busy doesn’t mean being productive.

What we get done in relation to our ambitions actually determines how productive we truly are. Some days I may work for only an hour and feel very productive. Yet on other days I may work for six hours and feel like I accomplished nothing.

Getting more stuff done requires shifting your mindset and examining all of the work that you do in a given day. These five power tips will guide you.

#1: Focus On A Few Big Tasks

Most of my weekly scorecards are filled up with goals from the top to bottom. On some weeks, I’ll give myself 15 big goals to complete. I keep all of these scorecards in a single folder. This allows me to take a walk down memory lane to see what I was working on that is now complete.

Those memory lane walks are sweet, but they also reveal a lot.

I didn’t know it when I started, but keeping all of these scorecards allowed me to have a file containing the secrets to my productivity. I have scorecards in which I accomplished every goal (very rare) and scorecards in which I accomplished very few.

It turns out I have a higher chance of getting all of my goals accomplished if I give myself fewer things to do! Even when the fewer goals are more challenging than all 15 combined.

It’s actually easier, and more productive, to focus on accomplishing fewer, challenging goals than it is to accomplish numerous, simpler goals.

Numerous goals requires that you to spread your energy across a larger playing field. But the more you spread your energy, the less focus you have to concentrate on each individual goal.

Productivity is not measured by how many checkmarks end up on your scorecard. Rather, it’s measured by the impact on the work you are trying to accomplish.

#2: Outsource The Smaller Tasks

With that said, we must complete numerous tasks for the survival of our businesses. If we focus on fewer things, the rest of the business will fall apart.

For a long time, my focus was on completing the numerous tasks that called for my attention. I was always busy, but I wasn’t always productive.

For example, one task was growing my Twitter audience and providing them with content. But the tasks associated with my Twitter account eventually became busy work and detracted me from accomplishing other, equally important goals

At the same time, my income wasn’t increasing and my blog subscribers weren’t growing. While that , I simply didn’t have any time to address those issues.

Outsourcing is the act of paying money to buy back some of your time. I no longer schedule my tweets myself or try to grow my Twitter audience. My freelancers do that for me. And they help me with my podcast, Pinterest account, picture creation, and spreading the word about what I do.

If I have to devote a lot of my time to accomplish these smaller, yet important, tasks, I can’t imagine my business moving forward. Outsourcing saves me a lot of time by taking tasks off my hands. But it also saves me time in other ways.

For instance, if you want to create an app but don’t know how to code, hire a developer and have that person create the app for you. Not only will you save time on creating the app, but you will also save time on learning to code.

#3: Give Yourself A Deadline

Deadlines create a sense of urgency. Urgency leads to action. Without specific deadlines to meet, procrastination will dominate your life. The problem with a “soon and later” mentality is that neither soon nor later ever happen.

That’s why I create a weekly scorecard filled with deadline specific goals. The scorecard creates that sense of urgency I need to get my work done. The goals are challenging, but not impossible. And each is marked according to priority.

The deadlines boost my focus because of the time constraints. I force myself to focus on higher priority goals and get those done before starting on the less important tasks.

Each deadline should be accompanied by a plan. What must you do each day in order to achieve a specific goal? Is it possible for you to take time off in the middle of working, or is this an all-in type of goal?

The more detailed your plan is, the easier it will be for you to implement it and accomplish your goal.

#4: Add A Deadline Motivator Into The Mix

Deadlines are as potent as you make them. Some deadlines will carry no weight whatsoever, while others will loom over your shoulders. The potency of a deadline motivator determines the potency of the deadline itself.

For most people, the biggest deadline motivator is accountability. Share your objective with a few people whom you can rely on to help you reach it. Now you’re accountable. Don’t tell people who will try to discourage you. Why even talk to them in the first place?

Accountability is a strong and easily accessible deadline motivator.

I am in the midst of working with a big deadline motivator. Towards the end of August, my first season of NCAA cross-country begins. Practices begin at 7:30 a.m., so I want to schedule as much content in advance as possible.

That is why I set these three goals for myself to complete before the end of August:

Write 30 blog posts.

Create 30 YouTube videos.

Interview 50 people for my podcast.

These tasks are in line with my overall content plan and will get me through 2016. Chances are I can run and grow my business as easily as I did in high school, but I want to be prepared. Thus, my view of the deadline motivator has made the deadline very potent.

I’m still doing a lot of exploration in my niche to discover new opportunities and stay up to date. Nothing will change but I want to have my content finished and ready to go.

What potent deadline motivator can you think of so that your desire to meet the deadline is just as strong? Make it as potent as you can.

#5: Less Talking, More Doing

Most thoughts pertaining to my business rattle through my head. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about them.

I spend most of my business hours putting in the work. The only business activity I engage in when I am not actually carrying out the work is formulating a plan to carry it out more effectively.

The more time you spend working on your business with the right plan in place, the more you will get accomplished. Productivity involves working efficiently, but no matter how efficient you become, you always have to put in the work.

In Conclusion

Goals pile up. And multiple goals require spreading your time and energy across multiple tasks. That’s the story of most entrepreneurs.

The most successful entrepreneurs are experts at prioritizing and knowing when to say no. Not all objectives are created equal, and certain tasks are simply not worth the time.

Outsourcing eliminates unworthy tasks. Saying no to certain tasks allows a stronger concentration of focus on the opportunities that will yield the strongest results.

What are your tips for accomplishing more goals? Did any one of these tips resonate with you the most? What goals do you want to accomplish this year? Sound off in the comments section below.

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I will begin doing monthly recaps at the end of each month. The monthly recaps are designed to let you know what I did this month and what I aim to do next month. I’ll share some insights along the way.

May 2016 Summary

May was my last month of high school. I received my diploma and said goodbye to many of my classmates.

I had a slow start in May because I had to finish some end-of-the-year assignments, but once school concluded, I got more productive.

One thing I started to do more of was exploration. I watched a video from Michael Stelzner this month that explained how we need to do more exploration while continuing to put in the work for our businesses.

Finding that time to explore without your business declining is an intricate balance. You want to explore to learn about more opportunities, but too much exploration leads to analysis paralysis.

I decided to explore for a bit and then either implement or forget what I learned. Now that the background has been set, here’s what I did in May 2016.

#1: I Changed My Blog’s Theme.

I used the same theme for my blog for so long that I didn’t think about changing it…until now. Remember when it used to look like this?

I thought that theme was beautiful until I invested in a Genesis theme ($60 value). Ever since I changed my blog’s theme, it has loaded faster which helps out with SEO.

And it looks a lot better.

I only changed my blog’s theme a few days ago so there’s still some work to be done. I’ll go more into detail about that when I discuss my goals for June 2016.

So many people recommended SEMrush to me. At first, I didn’t listen to them because I was under the belief that if your social media traffic was good, then your SEO traffic would be good too.

I decided to invest in SEMrush this month, and I am absolutely blown away. SEMrush is great for finding the perfect keywords to rank for and learning a lot about your competition.

Right now, I have been using SEMrush to fix my blog. I get to see all of the errors that are hurting my blog’s SEO ranking. Knowing these errors allows you to identify what needs to get fixed.

Once all of those fixes are made, your blog will start getting more search engine traffic.

#3: I Decided To Finally Start A Podcast.

Out of everything I did for my business this month, starting the podcast was the best thing I did. The podcast isn’t up yet, but I already have over a dozen guests slated for different times and dates. I said I would start a podcast twice. This is the third time, and this time it’s happening.

The podcast is about achieving breakthrough success. I find experts who have achieved success and/or know certain expertise that millions of people want to know for themselves.

The focus of each episode will be on the expert’s journey towards success (a.k.a. all of the work that led to the breakthrough).

My friend Jeffrey Shaw suggested that I use the Skype Call Recorder and use ScreenFlow as a backup. That’s exactly what I am going with for my podcast episodes.

Blog Posts I Wrote:

If you missed the blog posts I wrote in May and want to read them, I have included them here as a reference. I published a bunch of YouTube videos too which can be found on my channel.

4 Ways To Read Twice As Many Books: I enjoy reading books just as much as the next avid reader. My busy schedule seemed to get in the way too much. That’s why I came up with four ways to read twice as many books.

5 Ways To Boost Your Kindle Book Sales: A great article for self-published authors looking to boost their book rankings. It’s a combination of methods I knew and methods I learned from Chandler Bolt’s Self-Publishing School.

That’s May 2016 in a nutshell. It’s been a whirlwind of activity since the graduation since my time has opened up. This upcoming Sunday will be my last track meet as a high school athlete.

As for what I’ll be doing for my business this June, here are some of the highlights:

#1: More Udemy Courses

I was not a fan of Udemy’s new pricing system. I saw my income drop, but now I’m back and ready to create more courses.

The thinking is that the revenue will continue dropping, but eventually that revenue will rise as the Udemy Staff predicted. I want my courses to rank on the top of Udemy’s search results by the time Udemy is back in its prime form.

To make up for the lost income, I am also putting my Udemy courses on SkillShare. I currently have one course on SkillShare which is doing well with zero promotion on my part. Someday I’ll have all of my Udemy courses on SkillShare. It’s simply another stream of passive income.

Right now I am in the midst of creating a podcasting course based on what I have learned throughout my journey. I’ll probably create an SEMrush course next.

#2: Blog Transformation

The changes I made to my blog are new. I changed my blog’s theme less than a week ago and am starting to see the power of SEMrush. I have been going through my content and optimizing it for hours so I can get more search engine traffic.

SEMrush is like SEO learning and implementation on steroids, but you won’t get a 50-game suspension.

The other big change I’m making on my blog is giving it a new homepage that looks something like Pat Flynn’s homepage:

I hope to have a home page like that for my blog in the middle of the month.

I don’t fully know what I will do for the sidebar yet, but I know it will look better when I am done.

#3: Guest Interviews

I am interviewing multiple people every week. I am getting as many interviews done in the summer as possible so I would only have to interview one guest per week during college.

While I would like to interview more than one guest per week, there are certain times when that can’t happen (i.e. the week of final exams).

That’s one of the reasons I am interviewing a lot of people in June. Interviewing people for my podcast will also expand my knowledge and allow me to explore new opportunities.

Podcasting seems to strike the perfect balance between exploration and sustaining your business. You sustain your business by interviewing the guests, and you also learn more by interviewing different guests.

My only regret about podcasting was why I didn’t start earlier. The podcast itself will get published before the end of the summer.

Companies see a 55% increase in leads when increasing from 10 landing pages to 15 landing pages.

Companies with 40 landing pages get five times as many leads as companies with only 1-10 landing pages.

More landing pages equates to more search engine traffic

I didn’t need any more convincing. Since reading that article, I have created two additional landing pages. I aim to create at least 10 landing pages this month.

The more landing pages I have, the more opportunities I have to get leads. And leads are something that every marketer wants more of.

Even the people with email lists exceeding 1 million subscribers want more leads.

In Conclusion

May was a productive month, but I am expecting June to be a more productive one since it’s summer time.

Most of the work I did in May was for my podcast. I contacted guests, had to learn the art of podcasting within two weeks, and had to figure out how I would record the episodes.

The main reasons I was able to explore several new opportunities was because I took rapid action. In April, I would have never thought of changing my blog’s theme, using SEMrush, and starting my own podcast (let alone do everything else that I do).

The moment I thought of changing my blog’s theme, I bought the Genesis theme. The very next day, I was using that theme for my blog.

Purchasing SEMrush involved no hesitation. I heard about it before and knew it was a great tool. Since I knew it was great, I didn’t have to think about buying it. I just bought it and began taking action.

Before I had the chance to give up on my podcast, I sent five emails before I had any time to think it over. One of those people I emailed said yes. I was suddenly committed.

At that point, I emailed dozens of people. Most said yes while others said no. As more people said yes, I was digging myself deeper and deeper into the hole.

This was a good hole to dig myself deeper into. I was committed to podcasting and was forced to take rapid action.

If you set a close deadline for a reasonable goal, you’ll push yourself to take rapid action.

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Do you have a philosophy that goes along the lines of the more work you put in, the better your results will be? It’s a conventional way to view work that is reinforced by wages.

If you make $10 per hour, and you work for 10 extra hours every week, you make an extra $100 every week. That’s an extra $5,200 every year just by working 10 additional hours every week.

An extra $5,200 isn’t something to laugh at. But what if you were making $20 every hour. You would make the same amount of money by putting in half of the work.

Entrepreneurs don’t get paid a wage. In the beginning, most entrepreneurs get paid well below minimum wage. Some of these people make less than $1 per hour. Some of those same people eventually became millionaires.

Entrepreneurship is a journey and true test of patience. However, it’s different from the workplace. You don’t make more money by putting in more hours. You don’t make the extra $5,200 every year by working an extra 10 hours per week. As an entrepreneur, you may actually lose money (and your sanity) by working those extra 10 hours every week.

How then does an entrepreneur make that extra $5,200? How do entrepreneurs like Bill Gates make astronomical incomes (Gates makes over $25 every second)? The answer isn’t in the working hours. The answer is in the working efficiency.

It is possible to live the Tim Ferris lifestyle and only work four hours every week while making a few million dollars every year. It is also possible to work 80 hours every week and end up with no extra money on the table. Two different extremes with very different lifestyles.

The goals most people share are to work less and earn more. We want that balance with our lives so we can spend more time with family and friends. It’s a matter of saving time and getting better results. Here’s how you find time and get better results:

Examine Every Opportunity

Don’t be a yes-man/woman. Saying no more often than you say yes keeps your time and resources more open to the people and opportunities you say yes to. I don’t say yes to every joint venture proposal. But when I do say yes, I can spend more time on my end of the joint venture.

I am not crushing it on every social network because I know that would take too much time. I’d have to acquire a certain amount of knowledge and put in a lot of work for each of those social networks.

If you want to see successful no-men/women in action, then look no further than Shark Tank. Maybe you’ve seen some of the episodes. If you have never seen an episode, watch one of them to understand.

Most of the deals on Shark Tank get turned down. Even when one of the sharks agrees on a deal, there are several sharks who shoot it down first.

They rarely say yes, and that’s what makes them successful. Just because you get an opportunity does not mean it will have a big impact on your success.

In the beginning, take almost any opportunity you can get. However, as more opportunities—and in particular, the time-consuming ones—come your way, you must make choices.

Outsource The Maintenance Work

Ever wonder if everything you do is important? For most people, the answer is no (sorry to disappoint). Some of the work we do on a daily basis is maintenance work. Maintenance work is the (possibly tedious) work that any other person can do for you.

The list is big. These are some of my maintenance activities:

Follow people on Twitter

Unfollow people on Twitter

Send pins

Create pictures for my blog posts

If I stop growing my Twitter audience, it spells disaster for my social media strategy. Something I considered so important was actually maintenance work. So I got that work off my back by outsourcing it to someone else.

Now someone else follows and unfollows people for my Twitter accounts. I also have people who send pins on my account and create pictures for my blog posts. No wonder the pictures for my blog posts have been better lately 🙂

Create Time Efficient Processes For What You Do

One thing I will never outsource to anyone is the content that goes on my blog. However, I am always looking for ways to write the typical 2,000 word blog post in 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes.

In other words, I am always looking for ways to write the same amount of content quicker.

Now I have a time efficient process that lets me write blog posts quicker. Here’s a basic summary:

Write a bunch of blog post titles (I’ll usually write 20-50 at a time depending on how I feel)

Outline those blog posts

Identify which five blog posts I will write first

Repeat

This process allows me to save more time when writing content. Typing faster also allows me to save more time.

To create time efficient processes, you must specifically focus on the work that doesn’t fall under the maintenance category. Then search on the web and think of ideas on your own that can help you save time. Create your time efficient processes so you can allocate your time to other tasks.

Some methods you come across for creating time efficient processes may involve an investment. You may have to upgrade one of your social media tools to get access to certain time saving features.

The only reason I went from HootSuite to HootSuite Pro was so I could get access to the bulk scheduler. The bulk scheduler allows me to schedule over 100 tweets in six clicks. If I manually scheduled that many tweets, it would take me over four hours every day.

Spend More Time Marketing Than Creating

Walk into a library or bookstore, and it won’t take long for you to find a New York Times bestseller. Libraries and bookstores like to put the most successful books and new releases where we can see them.

So what makes a book a New York Times bestseller? The answer isn’t the content. The answer is the marketing. If Freakonomics got zero sales, it wouldn’t have been a New York Times bestseller (even though it is a fascinating book). It ended up getting over four million sales, all because of marketing.

It’s great to create numerous products, but you must spend time marketing them so they thrive. If you create a product but keep it a secret, you won’t get many sales (if any at all). It could be the most valuable product in your niche, but if you don’t market it, people won’t know to buy it.

Spending more time marketing than creating will allow you to get better results from your overall strategy. The best part is that as you accumulate more revenue, you can put that revenue into other areas of your business such as advertising and outsourcing.

In Conclusion

The amount of time you spend working is irrelevant with getting results. The way you utilize your time ultimately determines the results that you get. Understanding this fact will inspire you to utilize your time more effectively and focus on efficiency over hours worked.

What are your thoughts about working less? Do you think working less can lead to a bigger profit? Do you find yourself working too much? Have any insights for us? Sound off in the comments section now!

Did you ever look at your life and ask what you would have done differently? I find myself in this scenario once every quarter, and usually during an extreme. Business either did really bad or really good right before the change (fortunately, the more recent scenarios were caused by the latter).

So I recently found myself in this scenario yet again. This time, I was in Cape May. The last time I was in Cape May, I decided to take my email list seriously, so I knew I was in for a serious self-reflection.

Looking back, I came across seven things I wish I did for my business when I started. I wrote this blog post so you could see my mistakes. That way, you don’t make the same ones.

#1: Focus On My Email List

I discovered the importance of an email list just a year ago. No matter how much bloggers like myself make up for it, we’ll still refer to under utilizing our email lists as the biggest mistake we ever made.

I am one of the legions of people who says I wish I focused on my email list earlier. An email list provides you with the most powerful way to build a strong relationship with the people in your audience.

#2: Avoiding The Classic Social Media Trap

There is a common social media trap that plagues most users. It’s the reason why most social media marketers don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers. Here’s how the trap works with Periscope:

“Periscope is totally dominating the social media space. People are saying great things about it. I better get on board. Even though I don’t have large audiences on my other social networks, I believe Periscope will be different. The other social networks are subpar compared to Periscope. Now I’m putting most of my time into Periscope.”

The quick summary is this: Most people focus on mastering all of the social networks so much that they end up mastering none of the social networks.

It’s similar to saying a product created for everyone is really a product for no one.

Sure enough, I found myself in this classic social media trap. I had a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, a Pinterest account in the works, a Google+ account, a YouTube account, and an account for almost every other social network you could think of.

I even had a MySpace account years after its dominance started to fade.

Then I made a life changing decision (literally) that made me take this whole digital marketing thing seriously.

What if I only took Twitter seriously?

And here I am today. With over 250,000 Twitter followers, it’s fair to say I made the right choice. However, I learned one important lesson about social media success.

If you succeed on one social network, it is so much easier to be successful on the rest of them.

Soon enough, I had a Pinterest account with over 25,000 followers. My YouTube channel has over 2,500 subscribers.

For a long time, Pinterest was my second best social network. That is, until my Facebook Page recently started booming. My Facebook Page’s audience size may soon surpass my Twitter audience size.

I get over 400 Twitter followers every day. On Facebook, I get over 600 likes every day.

What happened? Did I get a shout out from Taylor Swift? Did I finally land that 60 Minutes interview? Did I buy fake likes (if you were thinking that, lie to me if we meet)?

Once I mastered Twitter, it got easier for me to master the other social networks. One of those social networks was Facebook. The way my Facebook Page took off inspired the next thing on the list.

#3: Start Facebook Advertising ASAP

I almost regret not utilizing Facebook advertising as much as not growing my email list. I started using Facebook advertising as my vacation came to a close (I promise I was almost never on my computer during the vacation).

I started off at $3 per day. I set up an ad to get likes for my Facebook Page. With a little under 400 likes, my Facebook Page needed the social proof before I started paying for promoted posts.

It turns out I was a natural pro with Facebook advertising (with the help of several training courses, a few books, and hundreds of blog posts). Okay, fine. I did extensive research before I launched my first Facebook ad. I targeted countries that allowed me to get likes for the least amount of money. My friend Jerry Banfield compiled a lengthy list of ideal countries for low CPL (cost per like).

After seeing over 100 likes come in and more than $1 left to spend, I knew I needed to put in more money. In less than a day, I went from paying $3 per day to $7 per day.

At the end of my first day, I got over 415 likes for my page. At least, that’s what the report said. When I looked at the total number of likes for my Facebook Page, the numbers told a different story.

I actually gained over 500 likes that day. On the next day, I gained over 600 likes for just $7 (based on insights data instead of the advertising report. Insights data in my experience is more reliable). That comes down to a minuscule 1.2 cents per like.

At that rate, I just have to spend $1,200 on Facebook advertising to get my first 100,000 likes (real people interested in my niche). Now, I am aiming to get over 100,000 likes by the end of 2015.

More importantly, I am aiming to have over 1 million social media followers before I get my high school diploma. That would be awesome.

#4: Write Fewer Blog Posts Each Week

At my peak, I wrote 21 blog posts every week. I wrote two blog posts for this blog every day and wrote one blog post per day for my Yugioh Philosophy Blog (now inactive). Naivety at its finest.

While writing 21 blog posts in a given week normally gives you the hard-worker badge, it is an overrated badge. I’d rather put in half of the work and get twice the results.

Now, I only write three blog posts per week. Although they got much longer than my past blog posts, the decision gives me extra time. Instead of thinking about 21 blog post ideas (and then outlining and writing them) every week, I only have to think of three.

Writing blog posts allows you to build up your blog. However, if you only spend time building your blog, people won’t come. You have to get out there by writing guest posts, getting on interviews, and growing your social media audience. Writing blog posts is just one small slice of the pie.

#5: Create Training Courses Right From The Start

If I focused on creating training courses and growing my email list in the beginning, I would have made a bigger profit sooner. That’s not what happened, so alas, no crying over spilt milk. I just hope that you don’t make the same mistake.

#6: Build Relationships With The Right People

Have you noticed most successful people have a network of other highly successful people? Two main reasons why that’s the case:

You act like the people you constantly surround yourself with. Choose your friends carefully.

Joint ventures. You both help each other become more successful.

When you build relationships with people in your niche, the relationship gives you both access to a new audience. If you and another expert agree to go on a joint venture, then your products and services would get put in front of each other’s audiences. This is how highly successful influencers are able to become more influential and successful.

#7: Give Up Video Games Much Earlier

For the title, the only reason I didn’t choose to say “never play” video games is because I don’t know what impact they had in my life. Maybe I wouldn’t be an entrepreneur. I’m not saying video games made me an entrepreneur, but maybe they steered me in a different direction.

Somehow, I remembered that when I was six years old, I was great at the piano. I took multiple lessons per week. At that time I could play some songs on the piano without looking at the keys. These songs weren’t like Beethoven’s masterpieces, but they were much more than Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Then I gave it all away for video games. The piano sat in the basement accumulating dust. Writing those two sentences makes me feel a fountain of regret. Luckily, I recently gave up video games forever and decided to revive the piano. Talk about a reawakening.

I get that some of my readers never played video games because video games weren’t in their generation. The way to interpret me giving up video games is to think of giving up a bad habit or addiction.

When video games started taking over, most of my elementary school schedule looked like this:

Go to school

Do as much of my homework in class as possible (under my desk, without the teacher knowing. It was either sneaky or brave. Your call).

Getting home

Rushing any remaining homework (15 minutes of time spent on remaining homework, tops)

Play video games until I was told to stop

While I managed to ace my classes, I’m not proud of the schedule above. Better to figure out now than 10 years later.

So for a time, video games for me could have been classified as an addiction. Now I’m done with them.

If you want to get rid of a bad addiction, here’s how I did it:

I went on vacation without bringing any video games with me. For two weeks, I couldn’t play video games whether I wanted to or not. There were many exciting things to do during vacation, so I didn’t mind.

I went home and unplugged everything. I didn’t bother playing video games for “one final time” because I knew it wouldn’t be one final time.

I listened to the right music while I unplugged everything. When trying to break a bad habit or addiction, few songs are better than Bad Blood. I am in a complicated fandom where I like both Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, but Bad Blood proved to be very helpful for eliminating video games from my life.

Giving up video games opened the door to more time that I now use to read books and play the piano. In just two weeks, I made a dramatic change in my life.

In Conclusion

We can’t cry over spilt milk. However, it’s a shame when the milk is constantly spilt, and nothing is done about it. When I reflect upon all that I have done, I look at my achievements and the spilt milk.

Addressing our mistakes when we catch ourselves decreases our chances of making the same mistakes again. Once we catch ourselves, we know what to be on the lookout for.

What are your thoughts about what I wish I knew? Did any stand out for you? What are some things you wish you knew earlier in life? Sound off in the comments section below.

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About Marc Guberti

Marc Guberti is a USA Today and WSJ bestselling author with over 100,000 students in over 180 countries enrolled in his online courses. He is the host of the Breakthrough Success Podcast where listeners learn how to achieve their breakthroughs. He coaches content creators on how they can attract more traffic to their content and boost revenue.

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